It has become a common practice for consumers to purchase food products fully prepared and to transport the food products to their residences, offices, or other consumption locations. Alternatively, the fast food industry itself has made it commonplace for the fully prepared food to be delivered directly to the customer. Such practices necessitate the use of receptacles for transporting the food products in an undisturbed state and as close as possible to its as-prepared temperature.
A cardboard box is normally used for containing pizza. The shape of the pizza requires the box to have top and bottom panels separated by peripheral sidewalls, the height of the sidewalls being quite small in relation to the dimensions of the top and bottom panels but sufficiently high as to accommodate the thickness of a pizza with some head-space above it.
Known boxes may include a single unitary lid like that illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,002,221 issued to Ragan, or a plurality of segments forming the top lid such as U.S. Pat. No. 2,562,261 issued to Collins, U.S. Pat. No. 3,252,650 issued to Pryor, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,951 issued to Kuhn, et al. A box which is constructed in a shape other than rectangular is shown in FIG. 7 of the present application.
A particular problem with a pizza box constructed with a plurality of lid segments such as that shown in the Collins, Pryor and Kuhn patents noted above, is that they must have means for retaining the lid segments in a closed position. The above stated box structures utilize various flap configurations to join the segments in a closed position.
The shallow shapes of the various pizza boxes have an inherent problem in that the center of the top lid, or top lid segments, may bow downward and contact the top of the contained pizza. The heat of the pizza and the flimsiness of the cardboard exacerbates this likelihood. The result is that the consumer is left with a pizza in which a portion of it may be stuck to the underside of the lid, or lid segments, making the pizza unappealing.
To overcome the above-stated problem, it is customary in the art to use a plastic lid support known as a so-called "pizza saver". The purpose of the pizza saver is to prevent the lid of the pizza box from contacting the pizza when the lid is closed. An example of such a pizza saver is shown in FIG. 5 of the Ragan patent. Pizza saving devices generally have a flat top surface for engaging the underside of the pizza box lid, and legs extending from the top surface for contacting the pizza product.
Although the aforementioned pizza packages and pizza savers function satisfactorily for their intended purposes, there is a need for a novel device for both supporting the lid above the food product and for retaining the lid, or lid segments, of the receptacle in a closed position.